Producer Paul Boomer: Welcome back to connect and convert with Dennis Collins and Leah Bumfrey.

I'm Paul Boomer producer, Paul Boomer.

And last episode, we were speaking with Mark Flamin from the Flamin

group about their family business, about their family dynamics.

And succession planning this episode, we're going to be continuing that with part two, where Mark is talking about

the three pillars, hiring practices, and memorable marketing campaigns.

I have a question regarding kind of your three pillars that, that, that, you know, I studied

your website and I saw three things that kind of impressed me, uh, customer responsibility, achieve goals.

and make things better.

Those are the three that I found on your website.

Um, uh, talk to us about each one of them.

What, what, what do you all mean by customer responsibility?

What's, what's your responsibility to the customer?

Ultimately, we work for the customer.

So we feel like we're liable and, uh, personally responsible

each one of us in the company for the success of the customer.

Um, there are some times where there's a little bit of friction between a sales person or a sales

manager and a customer, or, you know, oh, that never happens.

That never happens.

That's

and the customer is always right, right.

. But, um, but we really, we really put a lot of emphasis on treating

the customer, even if sometimes we don't think that they're right.

That, that they are.

And there, there's, I I, I mean, I, I can't really think.

Nothing comes to mind of a problem we've ever had with a customer issue

that we haven't been able to solve through some sort of agreement.

Um, so I mean, there's, because we're such a diverse business, obviously we have a lot to offer.

So if it's something where we're, we're butting heads on a piece of product, then, you know, we have other.

Other avenues that we can explore in terms of, okay, well, if that didn't make sense, then maybe there's

some rental credits or, you know, um, and it's even little stuff.

Like I, when I was younger, we'd have bins show up and we get a call from a truck driver that, you know,

they're going to deliver an order of bins and they want to see if they can get unloaded that night.

Well, we'd stay at work, you know, and we'd, we'd have a couple of pops and then the truck would roll into the yard.

And pretty soon by the time it's said and done, we've got everything packed away.

We're leaving the office at 9 30 PM.

I mean, that happened Countless occasions, right?

I mean, yeah, that's yeah.

So I saw too, that everyone in the organization has a goal.

Everyone has a mission.

It sounds like, uh, how does that work out?

Uh, it works out now, uh, myself, I'm, I'm not really involved in too much of a team atmosphere right

now with, uh, the new sprayer drone project that we're bringing to market.

But, uh, previously what we would do is we would make sure that we're doing a SWAT analysis.

Um, at the start of each year, uh, for each department and for each person.

And, and really what it is, is it's the executive level directors meeting with any person in the company to

establish the goals that they want to achieve for the next year and to

work with them on coming up with a game plan to achieve those goals.

So

it's the formal process.

You, you, yeah.

Yeah, this isn't just, Oh, hey, what do you want to get done next year?

It's, uh, we do a little more than that.

For sure.

And our, our HR team, they're fantastic.

I mean, it's part of our employer reviews every year that, you

know, there's a large, pretty substantial form to fill out with.

What were you looking to achieve this year?

What part about that did you not achieve?

And they follow up really well.

So they'll, they'll get ahold of the right manager or the right.

Uh, person in that hierarchical chain to, to follow up with that employee to make sure that, you know, we're

doing all that we can to help them continue to try and meet those goals.

Hands on and accountability, Tim.

Yes, absolutely.

And the third pillar was making things better.

I think you've already spoken at length about that.

That's about, you know, giving back.

100%.

It's about giving back.

It's about, you know, one thing that popped into my head when, uh, when you mentioned that there.

Don Flamin, our president and CEO.

I remember about 15 years ago, somebody had mentioned, I'm going to go outside

and clean up garbage for a few minutes while I'm having coffee this morning.

And I said, oh, that's a bit of a weird thing to do.

You work behind the parts counter or whatever.

And they said, well, this morning, Don came into work, and we watched him walk across the yard, and he picked

up five or six pieces of plastic or garbage on the way to the building.

Went out of his way to go around to the lorries container and dropped them off.

And he doesn't, he, he wouldn't have never done something like that for anything else than he just cares.

And so when we talk about making things better, it's it's every single facet if there's something out of

place, it doesn't take any more time just to readjust that one thing as you're walking past it, or there's

a shelf that needs to be wiped and maybe we have a slow Saturday.

So the guys are keeping busy with that kind of thing.

So, um, yeah, making things better on a whole is just exactly what it describes.

But if to granular, it's, um, it's making sure that we're looking after the garbage in the yard, making sure

that We're looking after people who are not even within 4, 000 miles of us to make sure that they have clean

drinking water and and eyesight and reading glasses and that sort of thing.

That's amazing.

Oh, I'm sorry.

One quick point on that follow up.

I love the fact that the top people you said Don is the CEO, right?

Yeah, that he does that thing.

He models what he talks.

He walks the talk.

And a lot of times we find in the, in a lot of family owned businesses and others, there's no walk in the talk.

There's a lot of talk, but there's no walk.

And then they wonder why no one's following.

So

there's a lot of finger pointing, right?

Yes, there's a lot of, Hey, why didn't

you do that thing?

That's your job.

Yeah.

That's

what, what, you know, that's not my job.

I'm the CEO.

Those words, they don't exist in our company either.

Wow.

Not my job.

You know, it, the, the culture that you guys have You inherited it, but you kept it and

you guys have cherished this culture that that Grandpa Frank gave you is a, you know, show me, don't tell me.

It's easy to say, oh, do this, do this, do this, but to quietly show and when it's from the very top, and

that extends to all the executive and then to all the people that you're hiring, you either fit in.

That's pretty much it.

And like I mentioned before, we do a pretty darn good job of vetting, you know, who belongs in the company and

maybe somebody who isn't a great fit, but it's, it's, um, it's never like we're discriminating against somebody.

We are absolutely everybody and and we also, you know, everybody's got the same opportunity to grow, um, both

outside the company and within, but we always prefer to try and push people

up from within the company before we start looking at outsourcing positions.

So how do you, how do you vet people when they're coming in?

Like when they are new to the company?

What's, what's the vetting process?

That would be a pretty good question for the people who do the hiring.

Um, I'm not really involved in much of that at all.

But, um, We, we have a habit of finding great people coming from companies that I wouldn't say aren't doing so well,

but let's say if there's a corporate buyout of a, of a different, you know, brand of company or a different type

of company, and maybe there's a little bit of friction there and then just throughout our network and especially

with our, you know, the, the Western Canadian household name that is Flamin.

Um, we get resumes all the time and, and, and.

My cousin Kurt, he does a lot of hiring.

One of his questions during the interviews is, you know, what is your, what is your opinion on lawn gnomes?

On garden gnomes and or, or, you know, if you were a pizza topping, what would it be one time we hired a guy because he

said his, uh, like, you know, we asked him that, that, that similar, uh, you know, if you were a pizza topping, what

would you be in the guy says pineapple without even thinking about it?

He says pineapple versus why is that?

He says, well, I don't know how people seem to love me.

Half the people seem to hate me, but I worked really well on most things.

So that's all I got for you.

Boom.

Okay.

You got the job.

We're going to try you out.

That was clever, right?

Well, that's how

you find out if they're your brand of crazy or not really.

How do you react to something?

Because the process of then, you know, uh, you know, being able to grow within the organization becomes obvious when

they fit in, but it's that initial getting into the bottom of the pile

as you, as you can use them to grow your business and grow themselves.

And I stress that a lot to folks as well, you know, in the sphere of business and what I'm

talking about business with, with other business owners and with, um, people who are perspective to

opening their own business or wanting to elevate in some sort of way.

I bring up the few examples in our company where, you know,

okay, we hired somebody to sort, uh, bolts in the bolt container.

We, we had a container full of bolts just for grain bins, right?

And, and, and the bolts are.

They're different sizes and there's nuts and washers and lock

washers and stuff, but we would hire somebody just to sort bolts.

And 20 years later, that person wound up being the CEO of our fitness division.

And so we have, we have stories like that, that exist in our company on, on a number of different occasions.

Yeah.

Those are the best.

You talking about the fitness division reminds me of the story.

And I love stories because I think stories, they just exemplify what you're

trying to say and what you are saying, but it was specific to the treadmills.

And there was a treadmill that You had returned to you after like 100 years being out there.

One of the originals.

Tell Dennis and Paul this story.

It's great.

Yeah, so I don't know exactly how true this is, but I've been told that grandpa was

responsible for bringing like the first treadmills into North America.

He, he had a knack for, you know, he traveled to China.

He'd go to, uh, uh, Everything under one roof type of a trade show.

He'd find a cool product and try and bring it back.

He was a little bit of a bull in a china shop that way.

He was a little bit of a disruptor.

So, um, and this, this will all tie into, uh, to that story that you're, that you're, that you're talking about.

But, uh, first, I guess I would just mention how those treadmills got here.

So Frank comes back from China in 1980, I think 1986 or 1987, somewhere around there.

And he says to each of the three boys, to Rudy, Dawn, and Steve.

Okay, we've got four containers full of treadmills coming.

Nobody knows what these things are, but we're gonna figure out how to market them, we're gonna figure

out how to sell them, and the first person to sell their container full of treadmills, I'm gonna buy them and

their wife brand new 1987 Ford quad cab three quarter ton shop trucks.

Oh!

I'm going through a family photo album when I'm like 12 or 13 years old and I see this picture of mom sitting

in this truck and maybe I was in the truck too or something like that, but there's a truck on the street and a

truck in the driveway of our small house that we grew up in and, uh, and, and so there's only parking for one

truck in the driveway and like these two trucks, these are shop trucks and dad says, yeah, well, here's the story.

Right?

So your mom drove one of these Ford three quarter ton shop trucks around for a little while because I sold my

container of treadmills first, Frank Frank showed up with these two trucks.

And so then with the, uh, yeah.

The return to treadmill, um, there's a gentleman named Brian Rask who is still with us.

He's been with our organization for about 35 years now.

He, he wrote the original Flamin software program and we were able to, so this, you know, customer shows

up one day and they said, Hey, we, we'd like to buy a new treadmill and this one works totally fine, but we

need, we would like to upgrade with one with, with way more options.

And so, uh, the salesperson or the fitness equipment salesperson at the Prince Albert store that my dad ran.

Uh, he goes outside and looks in the back of the truck at this

treadmill that they had brought to us to assess a trade in value.

And he said, I have never seen anything like this before.

Of course, back then a treadmill was only about four feet long and it had a lever that you

would kind of pull to adjust the speed because it was a constant RPM motor and yadda yadda yadda.

So like this thing is, it's, it's old, like it's really old, like older than dirt.

And he says, yeah, I'm going to have to ask somebody else about this.

I have no idea.

So he goes and gets data.

And this is maybe about 15 or 16 years ago.

Dad comes out and he looks at this treadmill and says, I will be darned.

This looks like one of the very first treadmills we'd ever sold.

He got Brian to get a, uh, a computer that we would have had, um, or a

computer that could run the version of software that we had back then.

They cross referenced the serial number and that was the first treadmill that Flamin Fitness had ever sold.

Wow.

So now it's proudly on display at our PA store.

Yeah.

That's a great story.

You guys gave the, gave that customer their

pick of anything you had current on the showroom floor, right?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that they did.

Uh, there was a, uh, you know, and I, and I think about this ties right into the whole marketing thing, but,

um, you know, I think about the way that the treadmills were marketed.

And of course we want to have that cool piece of history that anybody can walk in and go.

Holy smokes, what is this?

Oh, like that was the first treadmill.

Oh, that is so fantastic.

And we've been trying to collect a lot of the firsts, you know, my, my long term goal is to have

a wall at some point, like a, like a hundred foot long wall.

Uh, my cousin Mitch was talking about maybe doing like a big deckled timeline

along the wall with when each division started, when each of the stores opened.

That sort of thing.

And, and, and this would be an excellent candidate just to have on the wall.

Hey, this is the first treadmill that was sold.

Um, but the marketing was crazy.

I mean, yeah, you know, dad had sold a treadmill to somebody and that somebody

had a dog and then this German shepherd learned how to run on this treadmill.

So it was like around 1992 or 1993.

I remember being at home in the basement in Prince Albert watching cartoons or something.

And all of a sudden this ad comes on.

And it was on a CTV channel.

I'm pretty sure.

And, uh, this ad shows, you know, Flamin fitness equipment, even your pets will love it.

And then it shows this, this dog in an all out sprint on a treadmill.

And it just, some of the, just some of the funny marketing stuff, right?

You know, we've always been pretty good at that too.

So

that's, that's, you know, that's what we kind of do.

Isn't that Leah?

I mean, if, if, if it looks and sounds like an ad, we don't like it.

We don't use it.

That didn't look like an ad or sound like an ad that that's very

very your grandfather was and your dad were way ahead of their times

for sure.

Yeah there was a trickle down effect I think between uh grandpa's brain and dad's brain for sure um again this is

a this is this is it it's it's hard for me personally to remember how the

whole thing played out but we were trying to figure out how to advertise.

uh, water tanks more effectively at one point.

So we sell water tanks all the way from 20 gallon small little potable

water tanks up to uh, you know, up to 8, 500 gallon fertilizer tanks.

Like any sort of a plastic tank, we sell it.

So dad came up with this plan.

We're going to Try and market tanks as if we're in the military and I I'm gonna call this guy who is in from

you know Whatever community who's got his blasting license and we're gonna blow up a water tank And I remember

being very very very young and thinking like I don't really understand how this stuff works But it sounds pretty

cool And so as the ad played and this was a television ad dad's dressed up like an army sergeant And he says we

are blowing tank prices Out of the water and then it, you know, the shot would go to a F 18 or something, or

an F 16 that's flying overhead and it flies overhead and it's of course just B-roll from the military or whatever.

And then it shows a couple missiles dropping out and flying off, and then it's a frame of a green.

1, 250 gallon round water tank in the middle of the field.

We did this, uh, behind our market.

I remember this

ad.

Yeah.

Have you seen it?

I have seen this ad.

Okay.

Tell me, tell me what happened.

So what they did was they filled the water, cause if you put dynamite into an empty tank, it's

just going to blow up and the tank will kind of flex and whatever.

But if you have a substrate in the tank, like a, some sort of a liquid or a water or whatever,

so they filled the water tank up with water and they dropped like.

I want to say like way more dynamite than what's necessary.

They probably dropped in like five or six of dynamite And so the frame goes from steve dressed up like the

sergeant to the plane to the to the jet flying overhead dropping the missiles And then all of a sudden it's

this frame of just the uh, The tank out in the middle of the field and it

explodes and you can't see anything because it's filled with water.

So now it's Just a huge mist.

And then there's green pieces of plastic falling down into the field.

And it was just it was so out of control.

You know, we

got to find that on YouTube.

We got to find that ad. That's a classic

great story.

So but there's something there's a burning question mark that you haven't answered yet.

And I hope I'm going to have to ask it, I guess.

Okay.

Apparently, according to what I've discovered, you guys used to sell spy equipment.

Okay.

Are you allowed to tell us, or would they come and arrest you if you told this story?

No, I don't.

Uh, well, I don't know.

I, we shouldn't politicize this podcast, but in today's day and age, maybe I might be.

Hard

not to

these days.

So.

You know, I, I grew up at work with dad, you know, mom was going

to, uh, school to learn how to do bookkeeping and stuff for the business.

So I really, I, I grew up with at work with dad and I remember running around one day trying to

find my roller skates to go roller skating around the shop or whatever.

And, uh, this truck shows up and we start unloading all these crates and

we're opening this stuff up in the showroom and there's bulletproof vests.

Night vision goggles high.

We had a, uh, it was a microphone, uh, set up kind of like what they use at the

football game with the, uh, it had like the, the dish on it and all that stuff.

So you could hear something.

Not

only did we have one of those, we had one that you could hear people talking from inside of

a vehicle with the windows shut, like, like really high tech stuff.

So Steve starts putting my dad Steve, right?

He starts putting ads out for this stuff.

Like, hey, we've got this stuff.

And, uh, and we're trying the market just to see if anybody wants some of this stuff.

And then he starts getting phone calls from the RCMP.

And I think so.

Yes.

They had officers showing up.

They said, what exactly are you doing here?

And he said, well, I don't know.

I just thought this stuff was kind of cool.

Like night vision goggles, who doesn't want to set a night vision goggles that would take us out into the field.

And, you know, me and a couple of buddies of mine late at night, and we'd go Instead of spotlighting

coyotes, we're, we're trying to find, you know, wildlife and we're creeping around in the dark with these night

vision goggles on and we just look like lunatics, you know, and so, uh, yeah, no, it was, uh, I mean, that,

that part of the business was short lived, but what it expanded into is our surveillance and security division.

So we had.

a division of our company that specialized in the installation

and and aftermarket care of security and surveillance systems.

It was called Flamin Security and we had we had that going on in Prince Albert as well as Saskatoon.

Yeah,

that that is incredible.

Let me ask you this, Mark.

Is there anything that you guys wouldn't sell?

If Frank could get a hold of it, you'd sell it, right?

No, this is the one line that I'm taking credit for.

Uh, sometimes I, you know, I'll walk into a sales meeting or, or, uh, or I'll walk out of a sales meeting and

the guys are fired up and, and, and even I've told this to customers before too.

Um, welcome to Flamin Sales.

If we don't have it, you don't need it.

And if somebody needs a building, we're prepared to start selling our locations too.

If somebody wants to buy a building, everything's for sale.

We'll sell inside the building and then we'll sell the building itself.

Wow.

We have, we have, I have just totally enjoyed this.

This has been a great, uh, thank you for being so transparent and, and so forthcoming with your great stories that

I think that those are so informative to our listeners and our viewers.

Don't you think, Liam?

Well, absolutely.

And you know what, Frank would be proud because you embrace this culture that he, that he built you and your

cousins and your dad and your uncles, you guys saw something beautiful and you're determined to keep it.

And I mean, you talked about Jack, your two year old.

Wow.

His culture that he's grown up in, it'll be a little bit different, but what's the important parts of it are there.

And I know our listeners are gonna just gain a ton from you taking the time to talk to us.

Fantastic.

I sure appreciate the opportunity.

Yeah,

this is,

uh, yeah, this is, uh, our podcast is called Connect and Convert.

I think that if you listen to Mark today, you probably found a bunch of ways to connect.

And of course, take it from Frank and Steve and the gang.

If you can figure out how to get it.

They'll figure out a way to sell it.

For sure.

Great lessons.

That's all for today's Connect and Convert.

Leah and I will be back next week with another episode.

Connect and Convert.